There is an artist called Cindy Sherman who has produced a series of photographs which she calls "Film Stills". The conceit behind this work is of isolated frames from a movie. Each shot is an evocative, costumed self-portrait in which Sherman dresses as some resonant female image in order to show the primacy of that image in inventing - not merely representing - women. Sherman appropriates a familiar cinematic context by placing herself in its midst. Importantly, in most of these "stills" her eyes are fixed on someone or something out of frame, imposing the idea of a missing narrative.

--Michael Sorkin
In the U.S, can any building or for that matter any image offer a completed narrative? Different people will see different things in the same building; or the same person will see different things over time.

People are comfortable providing their own fuzzy and inexact explanation for the architecture surrounding them, making the understanding of all buildings innocent and in a way naive. This happens in places where history has lost its grip and people are rootless. For most of us history is over, no longer providing the foundation for normative thinking and a common understanding of any image including architecture.

Is there an appropriate architecture for a place where invention is more important than history?

Buildings should be two things. First, they should evolve from a known starting point towards an unknown conclusion. This transformation from known to unknown makes architecture self-evident, resting on its own internal logic. As a result, it is freed from the need to reference any specific theory or visual context; freed from the need to be complete. For those who are innocent of the past and the lessons of history, there is a certain comfort with innovation that brings on the unexpected and the unknown. Second, like Cindy Sherman's Film Stills, buildings should embrace the expectation the narrative will always remain incomplete. In other words, embracing the ambiguity of the missing narrative.